As an enthusiastic supporter of the Special Olympics who has worked for more than two decades with Special Olympics International, Harvard Law School Professor William P. Alford welcomed the opportunity to help bring about the 2013 Special Olympics World Winter Games, held in PyeongChang, Korea earlier this year. “One of the major messages of the Special Olympics is that having a disability need not be seen as being as limiting or disqualifying as some people might assume,” says Alford, director of East Asian Legal Studies and chair of the Harvard Law School Project on Disability (HPOD).

Harvard Law School Visiting Professor Michael Ashley Stein ’88 was awarded the 2013 Viscardi Award, which honors people living with disabilities for their work and influence in the global disability community.

In October, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg issued two rulings bolstering the rights of persons with psycho-social disabilities. Both cases were brought by Hungarian-Slovakian disability rights activist János Fiala-Butora LL.M. ’10, an S.J.D. candidate at Harvard Law School and an associate of the Harvard Law School Project on Disability, known as HPOD.

Michael Stein ‘88, Harvard Law School visiting professor and executive director of the Harvard Law School Project on Disability, was one of a dozen people featured in the July 15, 2012, Boston Globe Magazine article, “12 Bostonians Changing the World.”